Hydraulic torque wrenches are commonly utilized to tighten nuts and bolts by use of pressurized hydraulic fluid. Such nuts and bolts may be tightly spaced on flanges and the like, which requires the overall housing of the hydraulic torque wrench to be as small as possible. Tightly dimensioned torque wrench housings may result in significant strain and elastic deformation particularly along outside surfaces of the housing.
Hose connect swivels are known to be placed on the outside of hydraulic torque wrenches to adjust the connection position and orientation of the attached hydraulic hoses to varying operational space and positioning requirements. Unfortunately, the significant elastic housing deformations occurring during torque wrench operation may cause leakage in centrally attached prior art hose connect swivels. Therefore, there exists a need for a torque wrench with hose connect swivel that is substantially unaffected by strain and elastic deformation of the torque wrench's housing. The present invention addresses this need.
The torque exerted by the hydraulic torque wrench may need to be opposed by a reaction arm. Such well known reaction arms may need to be attached to the torque wrench most distant to the main wrench axis at the peripheral end of the piston end housing portion. The attachment of a reaction arm there induces additional strain and elastic deformation particularly to the piston side of the torque wrench housing. At the same time, the peripheral end of the piston side housing portion becomes unavailable to position there a hose connect swivel. Therefore, there exists a need for a hose connect swivel that may be attached centrally on the hydraulic torque wrench in a fashion that on one hand provides sufficient clearance to a reaction arm mounted on the piston side housing portion and on the other hand is unaffected by the additional strain and elastic deformation of a reaction arm that is mounted at the piston side of the housing. The present invention addresses also this need.